Thyrian crept around Vylaena’s side, crouching next to her. She didn’t break her examination to acknowledge him.
He noted a series of punctures decorating the lorist’s neck. Dried blood crusted the man’s ashen skin, his wounds stained black by the ether that had made them.
“Ethershot?” he asked her.
Flinx, her watery eyes still wide, noticed the pensive look on Vylaena’s face. “What is it?”
Vylaena frowned. “It’s just . . . ethershot isn’t easy to get ahold of, even in a city like this. Only the Royal Guard stockpiles rounds in any decent quantity, and nowadays even that’s a stretch with no ethersmith to replenish them.” She shook her head. “It’s also woefully difficult to forge. No amateur ethersmith would even attempt make it; it requires someone who is well-practiced and powerful. Cathedral-trained, usually.”
“Why?” Alaric asked.
“Forging ether isn’t as simple as it sounds. Ether responds to your thoughts—all your thoughts. If you can’t control them and hone them down to exactly what you want—and only what you want—then things can go horribly wrong. When you make a weapon, you’re making something with the intention to kill. Thinking about death while forging ether?” Her jaw hardened. “It doesn’t always receive the message the way you intend.”
“So whoever killed Lorist Rynley was a powerful ether-touched,” Thyrian clarified.
“Or had access to one.”
Flinx kneaded her eyes with a knuckle, clearly still distressed. “Someone could have stolen a round, couldn’t they? From the Guard’s stores?”
“Or he is a guard,” Vylaena pointed out.
Everyone was silent. Vylaena rose to her feet, stepping over Rynley and leaning against the man’s desk, arms crossed, grey eyes lost in thought.
There was a heavy pounding on the door. “Prince Alaric!” one of the guards yelled through the wood. “The king summons you back to the banquet. Immediately.”
Alaric groaned. “We’ll be right out,” he called back, withdrawing his hand from Flinx’s back. She stepped away from him, glancing at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to the grieving librarian. “Deeply sorry. Will you be alright here in the library, or should I have you installed in the castle tonight?”
“Oh—goddesses no, I’ll be fine,” Flinx sputtered. “Don’t concern yourself.”
Alaric inclined his head, but his eyes lingered on the librarian, a helpless, sad look on his face. He said no more, motioning for Thyrian and Vylaena. They followed him out the door in silence, until Flinx reached out to touch Vylaena’s arm. “A moment,” she said, her eyes locking onto Vylaena’s with pointed intensity. “I have something to tell you about that research you commissioned. It will only take a second.”
Vylaena paused, Flinx’s hand still resting on her arm, and Thyrian thought he saw something private pass between them. Then the Shadowheart turned, nodding to the others. “I’ll catch up. Go on ahead; don’t want you upsetting the king.”
Thyrian highly doubted Vylaena gave a damn about the king’s feelings. But he filed his observations away and obliged, following Alaric out of the room and back into the waiting circle of guardsmen.
✽✽✽
Inside the office, Vylaena closed the door behind them. “Tell me what you know,” she prompted.
Flinx licked her lips. “I’m sorry, I won’t keep you; I just didn’t . . . I was afraid to . . .”
“You can trust me.”
Flinx nodded, taking a steadying breath. “It’s not you; it’s . . . Alaric. I didn’t want to say this in front of the prince.” She glanced at Lorist Rynley’s body and then quickly back to Vylaena. “I have reason to believe Rynley was under considerable stress. He might’ve even been threatened. Lately he’s been looking increasingly harried, and he told me that . . . that something is going on. And I’m not sure he just meant the mess in the south. He wanted me to get out of Enserion. As if it wasn’t safe.”
“Well, it’s not,” Vylaena pointed out. She pursed her lips, glancing back over her shoulder at the crumpled lorist. “Who might’ve been harassing him?”
“I don’t know. But I think it all began around the same time I noticed he was working for Prince Eyren.”
Vylaena’s eyes were back on Flinx in a second. “Eyren?”
Flinx nodded. “I’ve spotted them together a few times, sharing books between them or discussing things I couldn’t quite hear. I didn’t think anything of it until . . . well . . .” She shook her head. “Then I put it together: Rynley started acting differently only after he begun doing research for Prince Eyren.”
“Why would the prince threaten a lorist? Or kill him, for that matter?”
“I know, it’s ridiculous. I just . . .” Flinx let out a breath. “I can’t ignore the coincidences. The first time I saw them together they were entering an archive of books I didn’t know existed. It included tomes of etherlore and ancient rituals and relics—books that are scarce in the main library, but seemed to be abundant there. And then, later . . . I was poking around and saw a book on Rynley’s desk. With a bookmarked section.”
“Tell me,” Vylaena pressed.
Flinx’s eyes widened slightly as her voice fell to a whisper. “Vylaena,” she breathed, “I think Rynley was researching the Breaking Stone. For Prince Eyren.”
26 | The Prisoner
Vylaena’s eyes opened to still, quiet darkness, and she knew she wasn’t alone.
She could feel ether swirling around her, brushing across her skin like a balmy breeze. It was more tangible than mist; it felt almost as if she lay in a lazy river, warmed by the midmorning sun, the current flowing gently around her body.
She had little to fear from it. Raw ether offered very limited dangers to those who did not bear Ikna’s Mark. She remembered this, repeating it to herself in the shifting darkness, trying to convince the nagging part of her mind that rose to alertness whenever the stuff drew too near. Lately, it was becoming more and more difficult to truly believe the words.
Vylaena skimmed her hand over the gathered ether, sending it twirling into the air. She could almost see it; years of dutiful practice having taught her exactly what her manipulation would do to the smoky substance.
But why was it here? Even when she’d lived in the Elderwood, where all loose ether ended up eventually, this had never happened to her. Her Mark hadn’t returned; it was impossible that she’d unconsciously manipulated the stuff. So why?
She wished, for the first time since leaving Aeswic that she had Karthus’s counsel.
Rutting Ether, no.
She rolled out of bed, forbidding herself to even think it. It didn’t matter, anyway. She didn’t need to understand. There was no immediate danger. It was just an inconvenience, and a mild one at that.
It wasn’t yet dawn, but Vylaena was wide awake now. She slunk to her clothes chest and slipped her sleeping tunic over her head, replacing it with her usual cuirass and leggings. She’d practice swordplay down on the yard until the castle awoke.
Vylaena strode to the door and turned the knob, sweeping it open to reveal a narrow hall dimly lit by the remains of last night’s torches.
There was ether here, too.
It looked like a monstrous black river, dense and sanguine, glimmering mottled rainbow colors beneath the torchlight like a giant oil slick. It snaked from her bedroom and down the hall, gently rolling on some nonexistent current.
Vylaena cursed under her breath. She’d never seen so much ether in one place before—well, apart from the Ether itself. Maybe once or twice, on bad nights when the moon was new, when she’d lived in the Elderwood. But never in the midst of civilization. Never caged by ordinary, manmade walls.
Curiosity was a trait they’d tried to stamp out of her at an early age, but she felt it rise within her—a feeling that stretched her insides and rippled in her stomach, forcing her legs to move of their own accord. She walked down the hallway with cautious determination, f
ollowing the trail of ether deeper into the castle.
It was a marvel that she crossed no one. The entire palace appeared to be asleep, tucked soundly into Ikna’s embrace. She didn’t want to think about how true that might actually be.
The ether-river curled down several flights of stairs, taking obscure, ill-used passages well outside the scope of normal, day-to-day goings-on at the palace. She passed through several dusty galleries and what appeared to be a room devoted to the storage of towering, marble statues—which, for some unknowable reason, made her skin erupt into gooseflesh—before coming to an arched portal at the back of an empty chamber.
The archway was edged in a line of stone that protruded slightly from the wall, its face painted by a master hand. Miniature suns, moons, and stars adorned the voussoirs, in a cycle of days that culminated at the keystone in a flourish of celestial bodies. Vylaena ran a finger over the paintings, and heat greeted her touch; she tasted the characteristic tang of ether-forged work.
It was a stairwell. An old one, from the looks of it—from a time when the Marked were much more accepted and buildings such as this one were crafted from ether-forged tools. It was easy to tell; there was something not quite natural about the perfect smoothness of the walls and the way each stair appeared precise and even. Vylaena tested a stair with one foot. It held, though she could tell it wasn’t stone. Not any stone made in this world, anyway.
She ducked beneath the archway to enter.
The stairs curved around a central stone post, winding deep into the bowels of the castle. As the light from the room above faded into darkness, Vylaena wished she’d thought to snatch one of the torches. She took a few more steps and then decided it was no use continuing on without one. What would she do once she reached the bottom, feel her way around a room she couldn’t see? Foolish. Growing up in caves had taught her better than that. Best to have some light.
Vylaena turned, climbing back up the curved stairwell. But as she climbed, she saw no sign of returning light, no hint that she approached the top. Round and round she walked, her speed increasing with her panic, until she practically sprinted up the stairs. But there was no end—the stairs kept going, and the darkness continued to hold her hostage.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She’d barely taken a dozen steps down. There was no way she shouldn’t have reached the top by now.
She finally stopped, leaning against the wall, and focused on suppressing the bubble of fear that threatened to burst out of her throat. She would figure a way out. Surely there was a way. Surely.
Vylaena took a shaky breath and turned back around, descending the stairs once more. If there was no way up, then perhaps there was a way down.
Rutting Ether. If she died in a damned stairwell . . .
She slammed into something hard, cursing as tears welled in her eyes. She touched a hand to her nose and felt blood.
It was a dead end. Or at least it appeared that way, until Vylaena ran her hands over the gritty wall before her and found a rectangular seam. There was a queer handle, too, about shoulder height. She grabbed on and pulled with all her strength and slowly, achingly, with a grinding creak, the stone eased inward.
There was light now—enough to completely illuminate the wide hall Vylaena slipped into. The river of ether still curled around her hips, but it was muted now, just barely dense enough to be smoke. It twisted to the left, toward another archway. She could see rows of iron-barred cells beyond.
The dungeons? It seemed so. She’d never had the privilege of seeing the inside of the palace dungeons, though she’d come close at least twice. She seemed to be underground, telling from the rippled texture of the walls. She floated a few fingers down the coarse stone. The hall had been carved out of bedrock, not built from hewn blocks.
There should have been guards, but Vylaena saw no one. As she followed the ether she spotted a few sleeping prisoners—and several plump rats— huddled on piles of dirty straw, but all were still and quiet. No one stopped her steady advance.
And then she heard something, far away and muted. She crept down the corridor, following the noise, as she tried to identify precisely what it was.
Oh. Screaming.
Well, it was a dungeon. But it was unnerving, considering no one in this goddess-damned castle appeared to be awake. Oh, and she was following a river of ether into the bowels of the palace. Like a fish tempted by a worm on a hook.
Smart, Vylaena. One of your best decisions yet.
The ether dispersed at the end of the hall, vanishing at a dead end. Vylaena cursed. What had she expected, to be led to a room full of lynd? The missing ether-touched? The key to lifting her Curse?
“A Shadowheart,” sounded a weak, male voice beside her. “Haven’t seen a Shadowheart in years.”
Vylaena had her daggers in hand in an instant, whirling around to face the only occupied cell in this quadrant. A dirty, bearded man huddled in one corner, wrapped in a charcoal-colored blanket. She’d mistaken him for a pile of rags.
Vylaena grimaced. “We don’t often . . .”
The words died on her tongue as she stepped forward to grasp the bars of the cell. There, beneath the grime that coated the man’s brow, was a delicate copper tracework, barely discernible against the deep brown of his skin.
He was star-born.
“Kaern Westley,” she breathed. Here he was, almost unrecognizable beneath weeks of dirt and stubble.
The man shifted beneath his blankets. “Suppose it’s not a rescue if you only just realized who I am.”
“Why are you here—what happened to you?”
Kaern grunted. “Been asking myself the same thing since they threw me in here. The guards say I lured a girl into my house and killed her. Now, why in the blackened Ether would I do something like that? It’s simply atrocious. But I can’t really remember . . .” He shifted again, scratching at his collar, and Vylaena saw something glint at his neck.
“Wait,” she said, tensing. “What’s that?”
Kaern blinked at her, then pulled aside the neck of his grubby tunic to reveal a band of silver-black metal. It was something like the torcs that the merchants of Estryn wore, only thicker and without any discernible clasp or tie.
And it was ether-forged.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Kaern sputtered, tilting his head down to examine the metal collar as though only now discovering its existence. “Was that there a moment ago?”
Vylaena frowned. “It’s ether-forged. Do you know what it does?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .” Kaern’s face clenched into an ugly scowl as he tried to summon an answer. “Goddesses. I can’t remember. But I have these dreams . . . dreams that . . .”
“What dreams?” Vylaena demanded.
“Of a man. I don’t know his name. Giving me the collar. Asking things. Questions about . . .” Kaern rubbed the Mark at his forehead, clearly distraught. “They’re just dreams. I’ll have my trial in a few days and I’ll explain that I’m innocent, and this will all be over.”
Vylaena hadn’t heard anything about an upcoming trial, and she lived in the palace. For a prominent person like Kaern to be accused of murder without the news spreading all over the city . . . it didn’t make sense. Flinx had said Kaern was missing. If he’d killed someone—a child, no less—wouldn’t everyone be talking about it?
“I don’t think there’s going to be a trial,” Vylaena said quietly, as Kaern looked up to meet her gaze.
“What do you mean? Of course there has to be a trial.”
“All of Cyair thinks you’ve just vanished,” Vylaena replied. “The king hasn’t mentioned that you’re here; it hasn’t been in the papers. Who else besides me, or your guards, knows you’re down here?”
Kaern’s eyes darkened. “They wouldn’t.” He paused. “Would they? Why?”
“I don’t know.” All she knew was that the man who had the best chance of finding a way to break her Curse was currently perilously close to being quietly executed. Wh
ether or not he was guilty, she didn’t give a shit. She just needed him alive.
“I need you to think,” she continued, urgency fueling her inflection. “What else do you remember from your dreams?”
Kaern grimaced. “I don’t . . . it’s like trying to peer through warped glass. I can’t focus on anything.”
“Try,” she pressed.
The man took a sharp breath and then closed his eyes. He was quiet a moment, and then, in a shaky voice replied, “There are so many, but it’s always the same man. And he’s always hooded. I can’t make out anything more than his mouth and his nose. He always asks me to find . . . to find . . .”
“To find what?”
Kaern’s eyes fluttered open. “Ether-touched.”
Vylaena’s mouth went dry.
“You don’t think my dreams are . . . real? Do you?”
Vylaena fell away from the bars, shoving her daggers back into their sheaths with hot frustration. Rutting Ether. Someone in the palace was keeping Kaern prisoner here in order to find—and likely kidnap—the ether-touched. That’s why they’d been disappearing.
“You must get me out of here.” Kaern’s face was ashen, his eyes wide. “Please; I’m begging you.”
Of course she had to get him out. But how? Ask Alaric? Maybe. It was a first step, at the very least.
“I will,” she promised, “but I can’t right now. Kaern, if anyone tries to take you out of this cell, I want you to scream. Do you understand? Make everyone in this rutting palace come looking.”
But Kaern merely blinked at her, his eyes clouded. They focused after a breath, and he frowned at her. “What? What are you going on about? Is it time for my trial?”
Vylaena stared at him, disbelief tightening her chest.
“You’re Shadowheart. Huh. Haven’t seen a Shadowheart in years.”
“Kaern?” Vylaena ventured. “Are you . . . alright?”
“I’ve been falsely imprisoned! Please, you must believe me. I didn’t do it. I never killed that girl!”
Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1) Page 28
